


Going to Be Just Fine

by Quakey (Quak3y)



Series: Author Favorites [1]
Category: Cable and Deadpool
Genre: (so much vomiting not graphically but repeatedly), Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Sickfic, Vomiting, canon divergence (set on Providence before divorce without divorce), may be triggering if you're freaked out about the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, mild medical/hospital horror (canon typical for Deadpool)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 20:21:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21185438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quak3y/pseuds/Quakey
Summary: Wade shuffles his feet and considers that this might be a bit of an invasion of privacy. He tells himself that, really, when you’ve bodily merged with another human being, been totally naked in front of them, and beat the shit out of each other multiple times, had blood on your knuckles from the other guy, what's a bit of throwing up?





	Going to Be Just Fine

**Author's Note:**

> This is utterly self-indulgent and cathartic and stupid, trope-filled trash. I have no regrets.
> 
> (But if vomit, hospitals, needles, or that sort of thing are triggering for you, consider avoiding this one. It's not particularly graphic, but it's there. Repeatedly.)

“Hey, Irene, ya seen Nate anywhere?”

It’s an innocent enough question. There’s no good reason for Irene to jump as badly as she does, aside from the fact he’s skulked up to where she, Prestor John, and Johann are all clustered around the computer readouts with the intention of seeing how badly he can make her jump.

She glares at him over her well-dressed shoulder, although the expression is somewhat spoiled by the white face mask over her nose and mouth.

“Probably home in bed,” she snaps.

“Nah, that’s not like Nate. If I’m up, then he’s _definitely_ up. He’s not going to be lazing around in bed when there’s injustice to be fought or orphans to be saved or something.”

He thinks the expression he’s getting is exasperation. Hard to tell with half her face covered. Is this what people feel like when talking to him? Cool.

“Didn’t you see the signs? Does ‘quarantine’ mean anything to you?”

“Oh.” Now that she mentions it, there had been quite a lot of red and yellow tape he’d had to hop over and and signs and things. He hadn’t paid much attention. “No, quariwhatsithing doesn’t matter much with a healing factor.”

Irene makes a frustrated noise into her mask and pointedly turns away, perfectly manicured fingers typing forcefully on the keyboard.

“It began three days ago,” Prestor John fills in, bushy mustache making a malformed disaster of his own face mask. “A boat of refugees arrived at our island. One of them was ill, and the symptoms quickly spread to the rest of the refugees and almost everyone they came in contact with.”

Johann has his arms crossed and shoulders hunched, looking tense and unhappy. He mutters something with a couple of curse words and “can’t believe we didn’t plan for this” somewhere in it.

“Nausea. Vomiting. High fever,” Irene fills in. “Some people are doing okay at home, but we have a significant number in the hospital.”

“So you’ve all got the Providence flu?”

“To our knowledge, _we_ in this room do not have it,” Prestor John says. “But thirty percent of the population already does, and the number is rapidly increasing.” He nods toward the screens which show charts with steadily upward trending lines and maps of the island and a lot of medical or scientific jargon that Wade doesn’t understand. “We are still analyzing the illness, but it certainly has symptoms similar to the flu. Yet the conventional flu vaccine seems to have no effect in preventing it. Our doctors are running double shifts trying to care for the most badly afflicted.”

Wade scratches his head through the mask, trying to put two and two together to get where-is-Nate.

“So, if Nate’s home in bed … he caught it?”

“You know he greets refugees personally whenever he can,” Irene snaps, fingers stabbing the keys like they’ve personally insulted her. “This thing is _highly_ contagious, so yes, he caught it.”

The tactical possibilities for offense are there, even to someone as supposedly brain-addled as Deadpool.

“Sabotage?”

“Don’t know,” Johann speaks up. “We’ve got the boatload in quarantine and we’re checking everything. Backgrounds. Connections.” He drums his fingers restlessly on the tabletop, a man of action who’s stuck waiting on doctors’ reports and interrogations. “In the future, newcomers are going to be screened and quarantined before we release them into the general populace,” he adds forcefully.

“Doesn’t help with the problem right now,” Irene gripes. Johann’s shoulder’s hunch up around his broad neck and he takes a deep breath like he’s trying not to start shouting.

Before they can go at each other in what is apparently an existing argument about security and could have, should have, would have, Wade cuts them off.

“Well, good luck with your island pandemic. I’m gonna go find Nate.”

He’s already turned and is walking away when Prestor John calls after him. “Cable is ill, I do not think he wants to see you!”

“Shows what you know! Nate always wants to see me!” he hollers back, and keeps walking.

~~~~~~~~~~

The door to Nate’s apartment is locked, in that fancy future Providence way that involves several latches along the edge of the door that retract into the frame, Star Trek-style. But when Wade peels off a glove and tries laying his palm on the technological pad thingie next to the door, the locks open with a small, polite click. Wade doesn’t think too hard about why Nate, the most controversial head of state in the entire world, subject of almost weekly assassination plots, has apparently given one disfigured and amoral merc the metaphorical keys to his house. It just does weird, fluttery, warm things in his guts and it’s far easier _not_ to think about them.

He steps into the apartment.

“Shhh. Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting messiahs,” he confides to the fourth wall and then tiptoes theatrically onward. He peeks into the kitchen, Nate’s office, and the room that probably was supposed to be a spare bedroom in the original plans but is instead an armory before he hears a sound and steers toward it.

It’s not a very happy sound. More like someone retching.

“Nate?” he calls, poking his head through a door that apparently leads to a spacious and minimally decorated bedroom. He can tell it’s a bedroom because it has a very large bed straight ahead of the door. Deadpool: master detective, can’t put anything over on him. There’s an armchair and an end table with a couple books and a coffee mug sitting on it to the left, and to the right it appears there’s an ensuite bathroom.

The only reply is more of the sound of someone _clearly_ throwing up.

Walking a few feet shows the someone is definitely Nate, and that signs point to him really not having a good time. Admittedly, no one has a good time when they’re clutching the toilet and emptying the contents of their stomach, but Nate’s dry heaving at this point and _ouch_ that’s gotta hurt.

Wade shuffles his feet and considers that this might be a bit of an invasion of privacy. He tells himself that, really, when you’ve bodily merged with another human being, been totally naked in front of them, and beat the shit out of each other multiple times, had blood on your knuckles from the other guy, what's a bit of throwing up?

There’s also an inappropriate little part of his brain that notices this is a pretty great view of Nate’s ass, nondescript and soft-looking pajama pants pulled tight across it by kneeling, and the back of Nate’s t-shirt is riding up to show a strip of skin and silver across his back.

Nate seems to have stopped with the unpleasant noises, spits once in the toilet, flushes it, and then sits back in a way that’s a little closer to collapsing to the floor than sitting. His gaze finds Wade as he ends up leaning against the large soaking tub that’s near the toilet. He looks shaky and there’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and it’s all pretty pitiful for a guy that not so long ago was the most powerful mutant on earth.

Wade picks up a towel from the counter and tosses it to him.

It says something about Nate’s current state that he fumbles catching it and has to pick it up off the tile to wipe his face. When he’s done he drops it and his hands into his lap.

“Hello, Wade,” he says. Every syllable of it, few of them though there are, sounds tired. And hoarse.

“Heya, Nate. Praying to the porcelain god, eh?”

Nate makes no move to answer the rhetorical question or get up or ask Wade why he’s here or anything, just stares at him tiredly. Wade takes a good look at Nate’s face and really notices just how rough he looks. There’s a couple days of stubble on his chin and cheeks, which is a good look on him, but his shirt is sweat-darkened around the neck and under the arms and he’s also pale and a bit hollow around the eyes.

“Yeah, alright then. Just stopped by to say hi, nothing really up, I was just kinda bored.”

Nate’s eyes close and his head settles back against the tub’s high side, and there’s just a hint of a smile. “I’m not very interesting right now,” he rasps.

Wade gives him another once-over, just because he can. Has he mentioned that Nate’s shirt is pretty snug-fitting and giving him some good memories of what Nate looks like with the shirt _off_? No? Okay, then he won’t bring it up. Even so, it’s nice to look when Nate’s got his eyes closed and won’t notice. Unless he’s peaking?

Wade squints suspiciously, but nothing changes on Nate’s face, and he doesn’t see any stray flashes of light or a hint of bright blue.

“You’re more interesting than the rest of them, even if you do look like shit. No offense intended.”

“None taken,” Nate says dryly, eyes still closed. “I _feel_ like shit,” he adds almost petulantly.

“You gonna get up off the bathroom floor?”

Nate’s eyes open, and again Wade is struck by the hollows there, circles under the eyes that hint at exhaustion and pain.

“Doesn’t seem to be much point,” he says with a barely-there shrug, less about being big and stoic and not showing emotion and more like shrugging is an effort right now.

Wade stares at Nate. Nate looks tiredly back at Wade. Wade considers. It’s not like he has his nurse outfit on the island. No time to go get it, even if it was in his apartment here. Maybe that doesn’t matter? Nurses can do emergency nurse stuff in their civvies, right? So Deadpool can do nurse stuff in his …. not civvies. This analogy doesn't work very well. Meanwhile, Nate is still slumped against the bathtub on his bathroom floor.

“Alrighty then,” he says brightly, clapping his hands together with a muffled _wup_. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

~~~~~~~~~~

It turns out that moving Nate’s half-metal ass isn’t easy. Even if Nate provides the manpower for standing, he still leans heavy and way-too-hot against Wade, slumped into his side and with an arm over his shoulder, and Wade’s actually starting to get worried, because Nate needing another human being to help keep him upright is very un-Nate-like.

He gently dumps Nate into his bed and drags the blankets over him, ignoring half-hearted griping about _I can do it myself_, then heads for the kitchen. A bunch of opened and rummaged-through cabinets later, he comes back with a glass of water and a bag of chips, because he remembers salty things tasting good back when he was able to get nausea.

Of course Nate is an ingrate.

“I won’t be able to keep them down,” he argues, giving the chips a side eye like they're going to attack him.

“Then at least drink the water.”

He doesn’t give Nate a chance to get out of it, just presses the glass into his hand. Nate gives in with a sigh and takes a few sips that seem unreasonably small before setting the glass on the nightstand, then rolls on his side with a groan and curls up in a large, clearly miserable pile of Mutant Messiah. Wade plops his ass on the bed near Nate’s feet and fidgets with one of his guns and makes one-sided conversation, because Nate isn’t responding to anything with more than a half-hearted grunt.

Wade wonders if he ought to leave Nate alone to sleep it off now that he’s done tossing his cookies, no Deadpool distractions getting in the way.

And then Nate abruptly hauls himself upright and dashes for the bathroom again.

“So much for that water,” Wade says to the empty bedroom, listening to the unpleasant sounds of Nate re-emptying his stomach.

Wade starts to realize the size of the problem when they go through the whole pattern--clean up, get off the floor, get back to bed, take a small drink--and then ten minutes later Nate’s making a beeline for the toilet again. He follows once more, but this time he drags the thin comforter off Nate’s bed, draping it over his shoulders and grabbing the water glass, carrying both into the bathroom. Might as well change rooms. The look Nate gives him, all tired confusion and then dawning understanding and gratitude, it makes him feel good and bad at the same time.

“I’m not going to say this very often, but I guess you were right,” he says, settling on the tile next to Nate, setting the glass to one side.

“Of course I was,” Nate quips hoarsely, but it feels more like he says it because that's the sort of thing they say to each other than because he really wants to be verbally sparring.

When Nate leans forward, Wade obligingly scoots the blanket off his shoulder behind the big lunk. And then silently freaks out a little when Nate tugs the blanket to wrap his metal side but doesn’t bother pulling it all the way off Wade’s shoulders, so that when he settles back against the tub side with a sigh, eyes closed and head tipped back, ridiculously large legs stretched out and taking up most of the width of the bathroom, his flesh arm is now pressed against Wade’s shoulder, both of them sharing the same blanket.

Is it heteronormative for best buds to almost-cuddle on the bathroom floor if one of them is looking like someone kicked his dog? Although Nate looks more like the dog that got kicked. Either way, it's not particularly straight, he’s pretty sure. He should go, before this threatens his reputation with the ladies. Although he’s pretty sure Nate won’t tell the ladies, whoever these mysterious and unnamed females are, that they were almost-cuddling, because Nate never seems to gossip or tattle about his weirdness to other people, so his reputation is safe whether he stays or goes.

Safe from Nate is another matter--Nate is already complicit in this shoulder-to-shoulder best bro comfort thing, but if he stops looking so preoccupied with feeling like shit and takes a good look, is he going to see something in Wade’s face (or mask) that isn’t really very buddy-like? He should really go. Bring back some chicken soup later and not worry about it. Nate’s a big boy (very, _very_ big boy). He can take care of himself.

Except … it’s Nate.

It really shouldn’t be possible for all arguments and counter arguments to be summed up in so few words, but there it is. Apparently he’s a sentimental idiot, because with anyone else he’d be waving good-bye to gross bodily functions and walking out the door, but _this is Nate_. Nate needs someone right now, and that means he’s going to stay.

Unless Nate doesn’t want this?

“I can go. If you want.” He tries for nonchalance, but it sounds forced to his own ears, obviously an offer for appearance’s sake. Definitely not convincing, whatever it is.

Nate doesn’t open his eyes or say a word, but fingers closing over Wade's wrist for a moment say _stay_ in all the ways that matter.

He stays.

~~~~~~~~~~

A couple hours later, he’s downright concerned. He’s seen Nate powerless or beat to hell or both a whole lot of times.

Slowly dying in San Francisco? Check. Being consumed by the TO virus when his telepathy was blocked? Check. Torn to pieces by the Silver Surfer, head pillowed in Wade’s lap? Check.

That last one derails his counting, because it drags him back from enumerating the times the editors and writers beat up Nate in dramatic story arcs to the fact that Nate is currently slumped sideways and using Wade’s shoulder as a pillow. Nate’s breath is shallow and fast in the sleep or doze or whatever he has going on.

Wade cranes his head, trying to get a better look. He manages to see that Nate has his eyes closed, brow furrowed in a miserable frown. He also manages to accidentally brush his mask-covered cheek against white-gray hair, feels the texture and give of it even through the mask.

He swallows and quickly goes back to _not_ looking.

What had he been thinking about? Oh, right. Nate beat to hell. That he’s seen, but this is different.

This is exhaustion and an unknown virus that doesn’t bother giving people sexy metal bits, it maybe just kills them. It fills Wade with unease and worry and dread, emotions in a constant, churning upheaval.

He curls fingers around the grip of one of his handguns in its holster. He wants violence, he wants _action_ instead of waiting. He wants to stand up, wander the apartment, break some things. If Nate weren’t leaning against him, he would.

But no, here’s Nate, hotter than he ought to be, and he means temperature, not something else. That must be Fabian and his innuendos again. Here’s Nate, feverish and probably dehydrated. _That’s_ more accurate. He should call Irene. He should call Irene and see if she can get some medical types down here. Or maybe he could get up, find some Tylenol or Advil or something to take the fever down, except, no, Nate wouldn’t be able to keep down any pills he swallows, so that idea’s worthless.

He rubs his hand over his mask in frustration.

Nate stirs with a sigh, body tensing and relaxing against all the inconveniently glorious places where he’s leaning, then mumbles. “Can almost feel y’ thinking. What is it?”

“Considering the pros and cons of freaking out."

“‘Bout what?”

“You, possibly frying your brain with this fever and puking up all the water I try to give you.” _And apparently awake enough to talk but not bothering to sit up. Is this a future thing? Is platonic sick day cuddling okay when you come from?_

There’s a weak chuckle. “It’s just the flu or something. Sucks, but I’ll get over it.”

“Unless you don’t.”

“Except I will."

"Oh sure," Wade mutters, "that's the Nathan Summers we all know and love, positive attitude and optimism all the way." He picks up the glass, nearly empty now. "Here. Drink,” he orders roughly.

“Don’t want to,” the big idiot mutters petulantly, turning his face further into Wade’s shoulder. Wade’s heart does a weird little flip-flop because Nathan Christopher Charles Summer’s breath is hitting his shoulder in very warm, regular exhalations.

"Don't care," he snaps, twice as mean as he would be if Nate wasn't plastered to his shoulder, solid weight and warm gusts of breath (that smell really unpleasant right now, but he's aware of the kind of B.O. he gets in the suit and isn't going to hold involuntary vomit breath against anyone), making his heart tap dance around his ribs, kicking all the feelings loose to race around banging into vital organs and squeezing things until he feels a little like _he_ wants to puke too. "Drink the damn water. I don't want you keeling over from dehydration," he gripes.

Nate sighs like he knows he's not winning this one. He hasn't won with the other glasses of water either. Wade doesn't feel great about it, forcing Nate to drink just so he can puke it back up, but he also remembers trying to _not_ push the water for half an hour sometime earlier this .... afternoon? Evening? He realizes he's been playing nursemaid to one Nathan Summers alias Cable for hours. In any case, when he hadn’t given Nate water, he'd just ended up dry heaving up nothing instead. Better to have something in his stomach to puke back up, and maybe some of it is getting into his body before the next round of clutching the toilet.

At least Nate is taking Wade’s attitude reasonably well, like he knows it's the right thing, even if he doesn't like it.

Nate sighs and turns his face forward again, lifts it a little off Wade's shoulder, reaches for the glass. He wraps his fingers around it right over Wade's, tugging it toward him, and Wade can feel the tremor in his arm, obviously right on the edge of strength and control, so he helps, guides while trying to make it seem like he's not guiding, tries not to freak out about warm metal fingers overlapping with his gloved ones, while Nate drinks in tiny, slow sips.

Finally Nate tips the glass away. His hand drops again, pulls the blanket tighter around him on his metal side. "Thank you," he says quietly, and then settles his head on Wade's shoulder again.

Wade swallows. Sets the glass down a little clumsily, clink against tile loud and echoing in the bathroom space. "No problem," he says, and then silently curses himself for how high pitched and strung out he sounds. Maybe Nate will just think he's worried about this illness thing. Because he is.

But let's be honest: he's also worried that he's either reading Nate's signals totally wrong, or he's reading Nate's signals totally wrong. In absolutely no universe is it possible that he gets this _right_. So either Nate is just platonically sick-cuddling with no deeper meaning, but Wade's being an idiot who's reading too much into it, _or_ Nate is letting his guard down and letting some real feelings out, letting Wade see that Nate thinks he can depend on him, that Nate trusts him enough to let himself be this vulnerable, and instead Wade is insisting in his head that this is just bros being bros being sick together. Or maybe Nate’s delirious and none of the explanations are right because Nate’s just out of his head.

In absolutely no universe, Wade thinks fiercely to himself, does he make the right call about this kind of thing. Absolutely none. He's going to pick the wrong explanation for Nate’s behavior no matter what he guesses it means.

"So if I make a decision and then decide to do the opposite, would that make it the right decision?" he mutters.

"Wha'?" Nate jerks a little. Apparently he'd fallen into a doze already and Wade had just woke him up, which of course makes him feel like an inconsiderate jerk. "Jus' trust yourself," Nate slurs. Stirs a bit. Groans. Settles again. There's a long silence, and Wade just assumes Nate is dozing again, until Nate very softly says, "I do," and then sighs and relaxes, weight pressing into Wade's side increasing even more, pretty obviously out of it again.

Wade really wishes he could shout and throw something, because it is _so not fair_ of Nate to say something like that! Not fair to say you trust _Deadpool_ of all people, not after all the backstabbing he's done to Nate (even if he turned around and promptly sided with him again), not fair to say that when you're half asleep and pressed so close that he could _feel_ the words rumble out of Nate's throat.

_Not fair!_

Fine. He’ll trust his instincts. And his instincts are saying this mystery illness sucks and he should do something about it.

He quietly rummages around in his belt pouches. Finds his phone. Flips through his contacts. Dials. Listens to it ring until it goes to voicemail. Hangs up and dials again. Voicemail again. Goes through the whole cycle one more time, except this time the call is picked up after the first ring.

_"Wilson, this better be important,"_ Irene's voice snaps at him over the connection. She sounds tired and frayed, like a cord that's about ready to snap under too much load. Too bad he doesn't have any good news for her.

"Hey," he says softly, suddenly very aware he's got three hundred and fifty pounds of dozing mutant slumped against his shoulder. "I'm with Nate. He keeps throwing up, can’t keep any water down, and he's really hot. I mean he's got a fever. So he feels hot. Could you send over a medical team or something?"

There's silence for several seconds.

_“I … Okay. Is he … Do you know what his temperature is?”_ She sounds ten kinds of worried and overwhelmed. _“The medical staff has been giving out anti-nausea medication for the vomiting, but they’re running low. They’re working on synthesizing more, but it’s slow going.”_

“Nate wouldn’t want to take it if that meant someone else didn’t get it,” Wade realizes, and figures he sounds nearly as tired as Irene. Also, weird, they’re agreeing on something.

_“Yeah. The fever though, it can cause seizures and brain damage if it’s high enough, and they have plenty of medicine for bringing it down. How bad is it?”_

Wade shifts the phone between his shoulder and his ear, pulls his glove off with his teeth and then very carefully lays it on Nate’s forehead. It’s warm, and definitely seems significantly warmer than ‘normal’ would be, warmer than he himself is and he tends to run hot because of the healing factor. But is it dangerously hot or just feverish but fine?

“Uh. He’s hot. I don’t know.”

_“Does he feel normal hot? Or really, really hot?”_

Nate chooses that moment to turn his head toward Wade, leaning into his palm with a little sigh, and Wade freezes, brain short circuiting. The tip of Nate's nose is brushing against his wrist, his fingers have slid into the soft tickle of Nate's hair. There's so much big-and-mean-and-sexy Nathan Summers next to him, yet all soft and vulnerable in the palm of his hand.

"Really hot," he squeaks into the phone.

There's a beat of silence. Then, warningly, _"Wilson, if this is some weird flirty thing with you two…"_

Nate gives a soft, low moan and shifts, nose bumping into his wrist again, all warm skin and soft hair. Half of Wade’s brain recognizes the particular noise as _Nate is going to barf again soon_ and the other half sidetracks into a very distracting, thoroughly inappropriate, guilt-inducing train of thought on what kinds of moans Nate would make in another context.

“No no no, bad brain! I just mean he’s warm, I have no idea how warm!”

Irene makes a suspicious sort of noise, like she’s not entirely buying it. Wade doesn’t really care, she already accused them of ‘eroticizing’ once, she obviously has some ideas he isn’t going to be able to shake. Plus he doesn’t have enough functioning brain cells available to care what she thinks, all of them occupied, craning his neck to get a look at Nate, who makes another deeply unhappy noise, metal hand clenching on the comforter.

“Dammit, Nate! I wish I could give you my healing factor again, help you beat this, but without the whole melting and swallowing thing,” he mutters. Irene snorts in his ear, probably about the ‘swallowing’ part. Then they both go silent for half a moment, apparently thinking the same thing for once in their lives, because then they simultaneously blurt out, _“Healing factor!”_

Nate startles, then makes a very put-upon noise when his man-shaped pillow is enthusiastically wiggling out from under him and leaping to his feet. He squints up at Wade, like an accusing, confused, puppy dog, although Wade hardly notices because he’s pacing back and forth, all of about four steps each way before he whirls and retraces his steps in the small space.

_“Healing factor!”_ Irene is practically shouting in his ear. _“Why didn’t we think of that?! Get up here! I bet the medical team can filter antibodies or a cure or something out of your blood!”_

“But how do I know I’ve caught it or been exposed or whatever?” he gestures wildly with his free hand. What if he gets there and they go to all that effort and he isn’t able to help after all? What if he’s leaving Nate here alone to get dissected by doctors but it’s useless and Nate needed him here instead?!

_“You’ve been around him for hours, you must have been exposed already. I don’t know, have him sneeze on you or something and then _get up here_!”_

“But Nate--”

_“I’ll send a medical unit over to give him anti-nausea meds whether he wants them or not and some fever reducers, and if he doesn’t cooperate I’ll tell them to shove an IV in him.”_ Wade gets the distinct feeling she wants to say she’ll have them shove it up his ass. _“Now get up here!”_

“Okay, okay,” he grumbles and hangs up. Spins toward Nate, an explanation bubbling up, and then cut off abruptly at the sight of Nate looking up at him unhappily. The blanket is tight around his shoulder on his left side but loose on his right, like Nate’s leaving it open hoping Wade will come sit next to him again.

Instead Wade forces himself forward to kneel in front of Nate, straddling one leg, quickly grabs the edge of that comforter and wraps it over Nate’s flesh side.

“I gotta go. I’m gonna go, go be Irene’s guinea pig, probably something very Weapon X or issue number three, lots of tubes and needles and being sucked dry by whatever weirdo doctors you’ve staffed this place with, just gotta make sure I’ve been sick so you can get well,” he hurriedly tries to explain as he’s tucking Nate in, too many ideas in a brain with the structural integrity of a poorly constructed house of Lincoln Logs.

Nate frowns and manages to get a hand free, fumbles his first grab, but gets Wade by the wrist on the second. It's the right hand, the one without the glove, and Wade goes preternaturally still as Nate's hand wraps entirely around his wrist. Nate's holding on to him, skin-to-skin. Nate's not wrestling or sparring, this isn't a fight, this isn't putting hands on him just to hurt or compete or win, isn't trying to do anything except hold on and keep holding on. He swallows, looks up from Nate's hand to his eyes.

"I'd like you here," Nate says, and his gaze and his hand are steady, even if he's looking distinctly pale.

"I don't want to leave either," Wade says gently, like he's reasoning with a child. "But I need to, I might be able to fix all of this. Irene said she'd send some people."

Nate scrunches his face up like he's trying really hard to stay focused. Takes a couple deep breaths through his mouth. "I'd prefer you," he says.

"Yeah, well, life's not fair and neither am I," Wade snaps, patience wearing thin and torn between what both of them want and what he knows is the right choice. "I'm gonna go. Just gotta ..." He stalls out. He's gotta make sure his healing factor has for sure had a chance to get this virus in his system, and he's not sure how to do that. Nate isn't coughing or sneezing, just puking, so he can’t take Irene’s advice to be coughed on. He could probably drink the rest of Nate's water from the same glass. Or maybe lick him or something.

Which is right about when his thoughts tumble down, like tiny wooden toy logs scattering left and right as he suddenly has a very dumb, very awesome, very ill-advised idea. It's the sort of idea that's perfect, idiotically stupid and so completely in character, plausible deniability completely ensured by necessity, and a chance he'll probably never get again, and an absolutely _terrible_ idea.

He's yanking his mask out of his collar and up to his nose before he thinks better of it, and then leaning in, grabbing Nate's shoulder with his free hand to stabilize the terrible angle, and plastering his mouth over Nate's.

Ew. Nate does _not_ taste so good right now, he thinks, but that doesn't stop him from licking across Nate's mouth, teasing at his lips, trying everything he can think of to get Nate to open up, let him in.

Nate gasps, or that's what it feels like, mouth opening in surprise, air sucked in, but accidentally sucked out of Wade's lungs and not the room around them. Which makes Wade give the tiniest of startled, turned on, instantly cut off moans, because he sometimes thinks that Nate takes his breath away but fuck him if he'd thought it would ever be a literal thing.

He follows his own air into Nate’s mouth, sweep of tongue touching teeth, tongue tip to tongue tip, gentle questing and wiggling deeper and half expecting Nate to bite. It wouldn’t be out of character for the guy who’s blown his brains out several times to take his tongue off too.

But instead Nate's metal hand is settling on the back of his neck, grip tight but not painful, tugging insistently. Wade takes one last dive with his tongue, sweeping as far into Nate's mouth as he can, and Nate's tongue does this wrap-around-his thing just as he's pulling back, the slide of one slick muscle over the other doing _so many things_ for Wade's libido.

Then he finally lets Nate pull him off with a particularly fierce yank.

"Well, that should make sure I have your germs," he says as brightly as he can manage, held at close range by the back of his neck in Nate's huge, metal hand.

Nate's eyes are as wide as he's ever seen them, and his skin is white as a sheet. And then he lets go and lunges past Wade and proceeds to be very noisily, thoroughly sick in the toilet.

Which is probably the least flattering response to kissing someone that Wade's _ever_ experienced, and that includes the times people have run away screaming. Not that he blames Nate. Non-con surprise kissing combined with Wade's looks and the nausea? Yeah. Not blaming Nate.

So he turns and runs while his best bud is still hacking up bile and water, promising himself that Nate will be fine, Irene will take care of it, everything's going to be just fine. Aside from Nate probably being spitting mad at him the next time he sees him. Everything's going to be fine.

~~~~~~~~~~

He was right. The doctors stick more tubes and needles in him than pins in a voodoo doll. It sucks and it hurts and his healing factor is in overdrive replacing all the blood they keep bleeding out of him, like he’s an all-you-can-eat, automatically replenishing buffet for vampires.

Irene is surprisingly nice to him and gives a Mexican restaurant special orders to open up during quarantine just so there is a continuous stream of tacos and burritos and other delicious south-of-the-border sustenance for him.

But even delicious food doesn’t make up for the smell of medical disinfectant and exam gloves and the indignity of eggheads swarming around him, having discussions like he’s not even there, like he’s a thing. Irene, when she’s there, will remind them with surprising intensity to treat him like an actual person, not a science experiment, and they usually jump and apologize with guilty expressions. Like they suddenly remember it’s Nate’s pet they’re experimenting on and they’re expected to play nice.

As some dude in a white coat jabs a huge needle into his armpit, somewhere needles absolutely are not supposed to go, something about lymph nodes, he grits his teeth and just keeps reminding himself he’s doing it for Nate.

(Well. And for all those other people on Providence. But mostly for Nate.)

~~~~~~~~~~

Finally the eggheads decide on the best locations for draining lymph fluid or blood or whatever it is they want and spread him out on a hospital bed, hooked up to machines like a spider in the center of a freakish medical web. And then they leave except for the occasional nurse poking their head in to check on him.

He’s kept company only by Irene whenever she stops by to give him more Mexican food and update him on how much of the population has been vaccinated or treated and by the TV he insisted they hook up for him or he was getting up, tubes or no tubes, and leaving.

Irene’s creeping him out. She hasn’t glowered at him yet, and she’s just ignoring when he flirts with her with a kind of tired patience. He almost thinks she feels _guilty_ for all this. Or maybe worse, _grateful_. Nothing like saving the health of the entire populace of Providence to make Irene Merryweather think he might actually be a nice guy. Crap. Way to ruin his image.

Speaking of image, he’s decked out in an embarrassing hospital gown that would certainly em-bare-ass him if he ever got to get up. Except he’s loaded so full of IVs and tubes hooked to the whirring, clicking, humming, beeping machines, an entire symphony of electronic medical noise, that he actually _can’t_ get up. He can’t even roll over. If he tries, alarms go off and doctors and nurses come running and order him to hold still again. So he gets the extra indignity of catheters, but at least that means he doesn't need to get up to pee.

The whole process makes nasty little irrational fears clamor in his head, scream that they're going to keep him here forever, that soon they'll start to _really_ hurt him, that he should tear all the tubes out and escape now. He has to crush the fears down. Remind himself this is for Nate. That everything's going to be fine.

At least they gave him the dignity of a thin, fleece hospital blanket spread over him from the chest down. And the TV even came with a remote, which he gets to clutch in one hand so long as he doesn’t jostle the arm or the tubes too much, so at least he’s not totally bored.

Oh, who is he kidding, he’s bored out of his mind.

Bored out of his mind and hating every minute of it and still staying put. Because while Irene assures him he’s doing so much good, the whole island is indebted to him, she’s also been extremely clear that many people, _including Nate_, are still relying on doses of the magic-Deadpool-elixir to boost their systems.

Johann stops by once with a quick report--it was sabotage, a biological attack via an engineered virus--and gruff words of thanks before he disappears again.

Sometimes he falls asleep, lulled into a doze by the seemingly infinite reruns of the Golden Girls that he’s pretty sure Nate must have devoted an entire channel to on the Providence TV channels just because of him. That's what he's doing right now, dozing with the remote in slack fingers. In the dream, Dorothy is chasing Sofia, who’s wearing a hospital gown, and both of them are using big guns to blast open doors as they run from alien robots. Then somehow it switches to Rose earnestly lecturing him on the proper way to apologize until Blanche interrupts her and scoffs that he’s worrying too much.

The sound of a door opening and then closing again jolts him out of sleep and back into the painful reality of too many places where his healing factor is angrily trying to mend flesh around something that’s not supposed to be there, to the fact that he’s hungry _again_, and to Nate standing casually at the foot of his bed.

He’s got his hands in the pockets of his jeans, a dark t-shirt tucked into the pants with a nice leather belt completing the look. Just standing there. Like that’s perfectly normal in this situation. Looking at him and the blanket and the tubes and the bed and the remote with a slight crease between the eyebrows but otherwise no expression.

It has Wade’s heart pounding. He’d really like to crawl away. Throw something at Nate. Hide somewhere. Anything but stay splayed right where he is like a bug under a microscope for Nate’s inspection.

“Sorry, I’d get up,” he tries to joke, “but I’m a little--”

“Tied up right now, I know,” Nate finishes with a hint of a smile. He moves carefully around to one side of the bed, the one with fewer tubes, and settles on the edge of the mattress, turned a little so he can keep looking at Wade, foot crossed over the other knee.

“Sorry,” Wade blurts out. “I’m sorry. Brain, you know, full of holes, seemed like a good idea at the time. Still my fault. Invasion of personal space and unwanted physical contact and all that. Had to be pretty gross. That’s all. I’m sorry.”

Nate doesn’t even acknowledge the apology, which is just _rude_, just keeps looking, then says very carefully, “Thank you. A number of Providence residents owe you their life, and nearly all of us have you to thank for a much quicker, easier recovery.”

“No problem,” Wade mutters, very carefully not looking back.

“And thank you for staying with me as long as you did. I … wasn’t thinking very clearly at the time.”

The bottom drops out of Wade’s stomach, freefall anticipation of something bad. Of Nate telling him he hadn’t meant to cuddle with Wade on his floor, that it had all been a huge misunderstanding.

Nate continues.

“I’m sorry I … shouldn’t have leaned on you like that. Figuratively. Literally.”

“It’s fine,” Wade says reflexively. Because it really was, he hadn’t minded. His shame was in how _much_ he hadn’t minded.

“Is it? What did you just say… ‘Invasion of personal space and unwanted physical contact’? ‘Must have been pretty gross’? ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time’? All of that applies to what I did. I’m sorry for intruding. And imposing.”

“No, no, it’s … you’re fine,” Wade says. How in the world do you tell your best bud you didn’t mind the cuddles without going straight to gay, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars?

He could tell his best bud that this is totally _Nate’s_ fault, that _he’s_ the one being gay here. Wade considers it for all of about five seconds before his conscience scolds him, tells him he’s not allowed to be a manipulative asshole to Nate if he still want to be … something … with him. Meanwhile, Nate just keeps looking at him, so calmly, just that little line between his eyebrows that says he’s being very careful, very deliberate. At least he's not doing the smug I'm-always-right smirk.

“It’s fine,” Wade repeats. “Just drop it.”

Nate makes a thoughtful humming noise, then leans forward, planting one hand on the far side of Wade’s head, and kisses him.

Wade’s first thought is that Nate tastes _way_ better than last time.

His second thought is that this must still be a dream or that the docs slipped him something hallucinogenic, that there’s no way this is real. Except it feels real. He doesn't think he's imaginative enough to have made up the sheer presence of Nate's huge bulk curled so carefully over him, not touching anywhere except for their mouths.

His third half-formed thought is wordless appreciation of the fact that Nate is way better at this when he’s not half-dead sick. He wants to grab the back of Nate’s neck, his hair, anything he can get his hands on, pull him closer, feel Nate's weight press him into this crappy hospital bed, except everything he’s hooked up to brings him to a dead stop when he tries to raise his arms, leaving him splayed out and trembling while Nate leisurely works him over.

He also suddenly realizes Nate's giving him plenty of opportunities to protest or pull away or back off. He's not holding Wade down or forcing this. He'll try something, make some little swoop of his tongue or tease at Wade's lips and then pause, just for a moment, a tiny hesitation, and each time Wade realizes he keeps meeting Nate, chasing the other's tongue with his own, arching up into it to pull Nate deeper. Shit. So much for plausible deniability or claiming he doesn't _like_ it, that he doesn't _want_ it. Is there any chance Nate is just messing with him, that he's going to try to claim he doesn't want this too, that he was just leading Wade on? It seems unlikely, what with the way Nate is building the kiss, from slow and careful when he started, to playful and hopeful, and now to something downright filthy.

Which is when it really hits Wade: Nate is kissing him, and Nate _wants to kiss him_. It startles him so bad, lights him up so hot and alive, every nerve burning with the excitement of this moment, this _now_, this reality where Nate _wants him_, and he moans into Nate's mouth, and feels and hears something he can only call a growl--a very hungry, very eager growl--vibrate back in return.

Nate finally pulls off and Wade blinks up at him, kiss-stupid and out of breath.

"Oh. _There's_ the smug expression," he says before he thinks better of it.

And Nate laughs, great rolling waves of it, the sound of happiness and relief, and then he kisses Wade again for quite a while.

When that kiss ends, Wade immediately starts talking.

"What the hell! Why didn’t you tell me before! Tell your doctors to let me the hell out of here! You can't kiss me like that and then expect me to just lie here!"

"Believe me," Nate says, "I feel the same way. They tell me another 12 hours should be sufficient."

Wade groans. "What the hell are we supposed to do until then?!"

"I believe," Nate says with that damn smug smile again, "it's called 'talking.' You could," and the smugness bleeds out of his smile, leaves something fonder behind, "explain to me why you like this show," he gestures at the TV, "so much."

"You'd want to hear about that?" Wade asks doubtfully.

"Of course," Nate says. "And I want to be here."

And then he makes Wade's brain short out by moving his hand to finally touch, gently cupping his cheek in one palm. Wade's already leaning his head into that warm hand when it strikes him that this is a mirror of them in Nate's apartment, except this time it's Wade who's hurting and Nate who's comforting. 

"Is this really okay?" Nate asks quietly.

"Shut up. It's fine," Wade says hoarsely, closing his eyes and letting himself sag against a broad palm. All the hurts, every place where there's an unnatural intrusion pulling at his skin, all of it, it's muted and tempered by one comforting hand, made bearable.

He feels the mattress dip further, Nate pulling himself up to fully sit on the bed, right up against Wade's side, a solid presence.

Wade falls asleep again with Nate next to him, and he knows that, for the first time in a long time, everything's going to be just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> I started this many months ago when a family member had a really bad stomach virus. I finished it this week when the same family member had _another_ bad stomach virus. Catharsis? You bet!
> 
> I'm [withoutaconscienceorafilter](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/withoutaconscienceorafilter) on Tumblr, if you're into that sort of thing.


End file.
